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Jill Kirby. Feeling the Strain: A Cultural History of Stress in Twentieth-Century Britain. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019. x + 259 pp. $120.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-5261-2329-9. 

Reviewed by Beth R. Handler (Independent Scholar) Published on H-Disability (March, 2021) Commissioned by Iain C. Hutchison (University of Glasgow)

Printable Version: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=55159

Echoes of the Past: A Historical Lesson on the Stress for Our Current Times

Occasionally one is presented with an opportunity to review a book that is not only a wonderful and interesting read, but also timely. Jill Kirby’s Feeling the Strain: A Cultural History of Stress in Twentieth-Century Britain is not only a well-written, interesting, and scholarly interrogation of the evolution and experience of the construct of stress across the decades, but a transcendent work in its capacity to offer a valuable perspective on our contemporary global Covid-19 pandemic-altered lives. Kirby’s account of stress, with its first-person perspectives offered through careful selection of source material and descriptions of its manifestation and effect across all social strata, particularly in the war years, echoes our globally shared experiences with the pandemic beautifully. Having not myself equated our experiences with those of people living through world wars, I was stunned by the parallels of conditions and contemporary responses to life under the stress of the current pandemic reflected in her narrative.

Although most contemporary citizens of complex, modern societies have some conceptualization of stress and can articulate the experience of it, few have given much thought to, or examined, the true nature of that construct as thoroughly as has Jill Kirby. Few, if any, have previously offered such a readable, informative, and comprehensive developmental story and analysis of “stress” as is offered in Feeling the Strain. While it is short in length, the book is long in interesting historical information and analysis.

Within the pages of this well-written book is a multilayered history of stress not only as a medical condition but as a shared, interpreted human experience across and within subgroups. In Feeling the Strain, the reader is engaged in the consideration of stress as a responsive human condition, as well as how that condition is defined, interpreted, and experienced in relation to the societal constructs and economic realities across and within the decades examined. Of particular note are the astute interpretations and rationale provided throughout.

Feeling the Strain is fundamentally a chronological examination of stress within British society across the twentieth century. Through a thorough and excellently articulated study of materials including self-help books, oral histories, and a variety of archived reports from studies on stress, Kirby creates a multifaceted, engaging chronology of stress within the milieu of each individual decade. More specifically, she offers readers an opportunity to consider the guiding principles and mores of the contemporary society within each decade as reflected in the recognition and interpretation of stress. Kirby dissects responses and definitions within each decade further through consideration of occupation, gender, and class.

The book reveals that stress as a human condition lacks objective, historical definition. Moreover, the right to experience stress and interpretations of that experience are grounded in class, gender, and occupation. Kirby presents firsthand accounts to support interpretations of physical and emotional “nervousness” as conditions of those with power, education, and responsibilities of industry. Stress was, more so in the earlier decades of the century than later, viewed as a condition created from working or living conditions, and complaints of stress were viewed as reflecting weakness of character, thus creating potential for loss of employment and respect. Kirby’s consideration of, and approach to, physical manifestations of stress (e.g., headache, gastric distress, etc.) is very interesting. The patterns of justification and acceptance of physical ailment over complaints of mental ill health through the decades and across groups resound with great familiarity. This is but one example of many throughout where the reader will find commonality with the voiced experiences of those generations expressed within the text.

Personal and societal economics as they relate to the manifestation and interpretation of stress emerge not only in a rich chronology, but as a complex portrayal of hegemony. Employers’ interpretation of worker stress (caused by working conditions and limited financial reward and manifesting in physical or psychological ailments) as irrational or unfounded and reason for dismissal, is shown to generate additional stress associated with concern over potential termination. Simultaneously, an employer or supervisor experiencing job-related stress is celebrated for their dedication and the brain-taxing work that has resulted in its manifestation. Throughout the book, Kirby revisits the themes of class and power as they relate to differential definitions and responses to stress, demonstrating repetition of thought despite significant changes to societal conditions across the decades and within societal subgroups.

The chapters that focus on the latter half of the century provided a mirror of my own experience and understanding of stress. The text rang true as I read accounts of stress in the workplace or home. Kirby captured the shifting responses and interpretations of anxiety, boredom, and angst that I witnessed in my parents as they negotiated the changing dynamics of the mid-twentieth century. I saw my own experiences, interpretations, and responses to stress reflected in the narratives and descriptions presented. The narrative style, application of first-person voice, and interpretation grounded in deep historical and sociological knowledge not only captures the reader’s interest, but generates contemplation and reflection, creating a meaningful connection to the ideas being presented.

Although I found the entire book to be interesting and engaging, several discussions stood out as exceptionally well presented. The initial discussion focuses on the role and growth of the self-help book as a means of defining and responding to one’s own stress. As the growth of psychology for the masses occurred, and as engaging a professional specifically for mental health and stress became more acceptable, the cottage industries associated with providing that assistance emerged and flourished. While the expansion of those industries took a backseat during the war years, they emerged with gusto again in the later decades of the century. Not only does Kirby provide an interesting, comprehensive, balanced consideration of the emergence and evolution of psychological responses to stress, but she offers a much broader portrayal of the diversity of access, interpretation, and responses across different segments of the societal spectrum.

Before concluding, I would be remiss if I did not give attention to the skillful and effective application of thematic strands. One would expect any book focused on aspects of British society to reflect class differences, but Kirby effectively uses voices from the data sources to give authenticity to experiences across groups. Of particular note is the clarity with which she presents conditions in the lives of women that not only create stress, but that regulate options for its management. She makes clear that conditions that stimulated social change, such as World War II creating demand for women’s factory labor, generated new opportunities for women, bringing interest and purpose beyond housework and child-rearing to their lives. However, such changes have sometimes been short-term, as when women lost their newfound jobs when the war ended and men returned home. Likewise, the exodus from cities to suburbia brought a loss of community, the nonstop workday, and boredom. While all aspects of this text are well written, supported, and interrogated, Kirby’s consideration of stress on women across the decades offers an interesting and important presentation and analysis that is greatly needed in the literature.

Feeling the Strain: A Cultural History of Stress in Twentieth-Century Britain is not only a very nice piece of scholarship; it is a very readable and insightful consideration of the human response to the condition identified as “stress,” as it transcends decades. Through Kirby’s skillfully applied lens, we see the ebb and flow of stress as it is manifested in work, home, and self, across and within social strata. We see how conditions beyond our control such as war, and by extension our contemporary global pandemic, contribute to wholesale depression and stress. As noted at the beginning of this review, I felt this text was timely and I continue to marvel at just how much of our shared, as well as my own, experience was echoed in the voices and situations revealed on so many pages. Beyond offering a wonderful and interesting history of stress, Kirby offers us something else; she offers evidence that despite the situations that cause great stress, humans are resilient and persevere. As the book was written before COVID-19 entered our vocabulary, let alone dominated and decimated lives, creating immense stress across the globe, Kirby could not have intended this book to offer readers a reminder that generations before ours have also felt strain resulting in mental anguish and stress. After reading the book, I felt that Kirby had confirmed that, like those prior generations, we too will respond to our contemporary shared strain, and that humanity will continue, perhaps better for the experience.

Citation: Beth R. Handler. Review of Kirby, Jill, Feeling the Strain: A Cultural History of Stress in Twentieth-Century Britain. H-Disability, H-Net Reviews. March, 2021. URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=55159

The Disability History Association (DHA) promotes the relevance of disability to broader historical enquiry and facilitates research, conference travel, and publication for scholars engaged in any field of disability history. 

The Disability History Association takes pleasure in inviting entries for the Article / Book Chapter Award, part of its 9th Annual Outstanding Publication Award that also includes a separate Book Award. 

In calling for article and edited collection book chapter submissions for the 2020 award, the award committee welcomes entries that feature new and original history of disability scholarship. To be considered, submissions MUST have significant historical content.

The award is open to authors writing across all geographic areas and time periods. The publication must be in English, and with first publication taking place between January 1 and December 31, 2019. We are conscious that some journals publish an electronic advance copy of articles that can appear a considerable time before the print copy is published; we also recognize that some journals are running behind schedule so that, for example, an article published in October 2019 might actually appear in a 2018 edition. First publication is the key criteria, but we will endeavor to be sympathetic in cases of “behind schedule” publication. If you feel that your proposed submission should be considered, but might be at risk of disqualification by definitions of “first publication,” please email for adjudication by the Awards Committee.     

The amount of the award is $200 for first place and $100 for honorable mention.

All submissions should be sent to the award committee, via Iain Hutchison, no later than May 15, 2020. One electronic (.pdf or .doc) copy of the article or book chapter to be sent to: Dr Iain Hutchison, Centre for the History of Medicine, University of Glasgow; iain.hutchison@glasgow.ac.uk.

In the interest of modeling best practice in the field of disability history, we require that the publisher/author provide an electronic copy in text-based .pdf or .doc file compatible with screen reading software for the review committee. We understand that copyright rules apply, and we will only use the electronic copy for the purposes of the DHA Outstanding Publication Award. Manuscripts not provided in accessible electronic formats for screen reading software in a timely manner cannot be considered for the prize.

Please include the full bibliographic citation of your submission in the Chicago Manual of Style format.

The Disability History Association Board plans to announce the recipients of the DHA Outstanding Publication Award in September 2020.

Members of the DHA Board are not eligible for the award.

Click here to download this announcement as a word doc or pdf.

by H-Net Reviews

Barbara Taylor. The Last Asylum: A Memoir of Madness in Our Times. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. 320 pp. $20.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-226-27392-1.

Reviewed by Alice Brumby (York St John University) Published on H-Disability (November, 2019) Commissioned by Iain C. Hutchison (University of Glasgow)

Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=53723

Barbara Taylor’s The Last Asylum is a strikingly honest and personal portrayal of an episode of madness in the final days of the asylum era. The narrative focuses on the author’s personal lived experience, yet the work sheds light on the wider framework of mental health policy during the 1980s and 1990s in Britain. The work is not a “history” in the traditional sense; that is to say, it does not focus markedly on the themes or chronology that readers might expect of academic histories. Instead, the book offers a rare insight into a mind of madness, revealing an interpretation of one individual’s encounters with treatment regimes. In doing so, the book analyzes the achievements and failures of different treatments offered to one individual within the mixed economy of care in 1980s Britain.

Taylor’s work is written for a lay audience as well as for scholars. It offers an introductory account of the Victorian asylum system, which to many scholars will be familiar territory. Within her prologue, Taylor writes: “I am not a historian of psychiatry,” although elsewhere she shows a competent understanding of the historiography (p. xii).[1] For this reason, a historian of mental health may find nothing “new” in Taylor’s narrative. Yet to believe this would be to miss the point. While not a traditional academic history, the portrayal offers some thought-provoking insights of value to historians. Moreover, the book poses interesting questions about the representation and portrayal of mentally ill people as they fall under the historian’s gaze. By putting the service user firmly back into their own narrative of recovery, this approach corresponds with the analysis of Roy Porter, who long ago recognized the need to bring patients into the history of psychiatry.[2] Hearing the voice of the service user from the perspective of a recovered individual, while by no means unique, remains an extremely powerful literary trope that historians can use to full advantage.[3]

The labyrinth of community care services, the irregular nature of record keeping, and the difficulty of gaining access to surviving records often make it challenging for historians to create an accurate understanding of how these facilities worked in everyday practice.[4] Therefore, The Last Asylum is important as it not only offers a narrative of institutionalization in a mental hospital but also narrates Taylor’s experience of a range of other psychiatric facilities—including her hostel and day center facilities. There is much insight to be gained from Taylor’s narrative about the care she received and its importance in facilitating her recovery. Her analysis also has potential importance for today’s policymakers and mental health professionals.

Psychiatry and psychoanalysis run hand in hand throughout the text and Taylor describes them as being “a very effective working team” (p. xiii). Psychoanalysis and her relationship with V, her analyst, often takes center stage within the narrative, and extracts of conversations between the two are bravely recalled in earnest detail. Psychoanalysis is described as Taylor’s “main treatment of choice,” but she acknowledges that psychiatry and the asylum became her “stone mother” and her “safe place to be” when she most needed help (pp. 268-69). Nevertheless, her enthusiasm for psychoanalysis sets the text apart, and while much has been written about psychiatry, less has been written about psychoanalysis as a form of treatment in late twentieth-century Britain. Taylor herself describes how “psychanalysis gets a bad press these days, especially as a treatment for severe mental illness,” and she explains how she was often chastised and derided by many psychiatrists for her insistence on psychoanalytic treatment (p. xiii). Given the detail provided, Taylor’s explanation of these sessions and her deep belief that they helped her recovery provide interesting insights for the historian and lay reader alike. In the epilogue, the distance between psychoanalysis and psychiatry as two completely distinct bodies of healing and treatment begins to be reconciled. Taylor identifies what she considers to be the most effective treatment policies, where psychiatrists think “about the meaning of symptoms, instead of just trying to dose the symptoms away” (p. 264). She suggests that, for many patients, time, encouragement, support, and the feeling that they are being listened to make all the difference in their journeys to recovery.

An avid feminist with a keen interest in social justice, Taylor identifies some important relationships about class and gender. These insights have been instilled from her time spent inside and outside Friern Hospital and add to the narratives of historians who have attempted to research the intricacies of identities from the perspective of accessing, receiving, and even administering mental health care.[5] While many historians have identified the importance of social class in relation to mental health, Taylor’s work offers a direct insight into this relationship, stating: “poverty is a psychological catastrophe…. Living in Friern I saw first-hand how poverty plays hell with people’s minds” (p. 130). Nevertheless, despite this assertion, little is found out about the personal circumstances of other patients, and Taylor’s own educated middle-class identity makes this distinction ambivalent within the text. With regard to gender, however, Taylor confirms a well-voiced fact about the process of caregiving beyond the hospital walls. She identifies that “when politicians talk about ‘community care’ what they really mean is women: women inside and outside of families; women struggling, often with meagre resources, to look after loved ones” (p. 83). While this is a fairly uncontentious viewpoint, The Last Asylum showcases in great detail how this caregiving took place, the enormity of the task, and the mundane and extreme events with which Taylor’s friends had to deal during her illness. This personal story offers points for generalization and understanding in a way that is difficult to access and interpret in formal mental health primary sources.

The book’s epilogue is important for a variety of reasons and is crucial in reinforcing Taylor’s argument. Indeed, the epilogue takes a more scholarly approach than the rest of the narrative. It is well researched. Taylor used a collection of research papers, historical documents, and social policy information, and conducted a series of interviews with professionals, service users, and activists to offer an assessment of modern-day practice. This research is then used to highlight the difference between the psychiatric services during her illness and what they are like today. The resulting picture is honest but occasionally bleak. Explaining the need for more money to be invested into the “Cinderella Service” that is psychiatry, Taylor emphasizes the importance in understanding patients’ histories to achieve a proper diagnosis, rather than just the administration of drugs (p. 256). One interview with a psychiatrist identified that individual patient histories have been lost in a system concerned only with fixing symptoms. She claims that, at the time of being interviewed, “individual patients have vanished” behind their symptoms (p. 268). If we accept this conclusion that an individual’s experiences have become less important, then Taylor’s individual story of survival becomes even more important, showcasing that uncovering personal histories can be the route to real recovery.

Taylor’s conclusion from both her research and her personal experience is one echoed by many post-revisionist historians: it is too simplistic to merely look at the old asylum system as merely good or bad. These binary oppositions are not a useful tool of analysis if we want to assess the impact of this regime holistically. There is ample evidence to suggest that the mental health system of the asylum heyday was chaotic and deeply flawed, and there is no doubt that unforgiveable abuses occurred in many institutions. Those who were commissioned to manage asylums and, later, mental hospitals had an impossible task, especially when faced with the numbers of institutions and patients involved. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that among stories of misery, there were often many grounds for optimism. As in Taylor’s narrative of her time in Friern, some patients recovered and returned home cured. Patients have recounted extremely happy memories of their time in institutions and have identified friendships, which were built as part of their incarceration, both with other patients and occasionally with staff. Clearly a range of factors influences an individual patient’s experience, including their specific illnesses, the institution they are sent to, the peculiarities of the staff and patients who live and work alongside them, and the level of support and care they continue to  receive from their families and friends in the outside world. Taylor finishes her analysis by asking an important question: what now happens to those who need the support of the institution in a nation invested in community care? This is increasingly asked as more and more information comes to light about some of the weaknesses of community care provision, and it is a very important question, and one that Taylor adequately uses to try and highlight some of the shortfalls in the current system of care.

Notes

[1]. Barbara Taylor, “Demise of the Asylum in Late Twentieth Century Britain: A Personal History,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 21 (2011): 193-215.

[2]. Roy Porter, “The Patient’s View: Doing Medical History from Below,” Theory and Society 14, no. 2 (1985): 175-98.

[3]. For more on this, see “Testimony: Inside Stories of Mental Health Care,” 1DVDR0000733, British Library Sound Archive, London.

[4]. Peter Bartlett and David Wright, “Community Care and Its Antecedents,” in Outside the Walls of the Asylum: The History of Care in the Community 1750-2000, ed. Peter Bartlett and David Wright (London: The Athlone Press, 1999), 1-18.

[5]. For an interesting selection of work on these topics, see Jonathan Andrews and Anne Digby, eds., Sex and Seclusion, Class and Custody: Perspectives on Class and Culture in the History of British and Irish Psychiatry (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004).

Citation: Alice Brumby. Review of Taylor, Barbara, The Last Asylum: A Memoir of Madness in Our Times. H-Disability, H-Net Reviews. November, 2019. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=53723

Don Fulk, Janet Allen. An Invincible Spirit: The Story of Don Fulk. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 2019. 154 pp. $27.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-944838-47-8.

Reviewed by Martin Atherton (University of Central Lancashire) Published on H-Disability (September, 2019) Commissioned by Iain C. Hutchison (University of Glasgow)

Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=54317

Don Fulk was an American disability rights campaigner who was deafened by spinal meningitis at age three and later paralyzed in an accident when he was eighteen, which left him a quadriplegic wheelchair user. Despite these challenges, he went on to find employment, marriage, and independence. This book details events in his life, told in the first person but written by his friend and colleague Janet Allen and published twenty years after his death in 1998. Allen based the book on stories and recollections related to her by Fulk in American Sign Language over the course of their friendship and subsequently translated into written English. This makes Allen’s account both a unique testament and a difficult book to classify. Although written in the first person, this cannot really be considered an autobiography as it was essentially ghost written long after his death and the label of biography does not fit easily either because of the use of the first-person voice throughout. There is also very little detail about Fulk’s family background beyond the names of some of his siblings, and we are told nothing about his parents or their role in his upbringing. The methodology in producing the text is also problematic as the process of recalling and translating Fulk’s history is not identified. Allen does not indicate if she kept records of their conversations or relied solely on memory, and it would be useful to know this. As there is no direct transliteration from signed language into spoken or written language, there is always an element of trust between signer and speaker/writer that the message being conveyed is an accurate one. While it is not the intention to cast any aspersions on Allen’s efforts, it has to be acknowledged that Fulk did not have the opportunity to check and amend any of the thoughts and experiences ascribed to him. This places an even greater responsibility on the ghost writer; the overall story might be weakened as a result, as will be discussed later.

Despite these reservations, the book does offer some illuminating insights into the issues faced by both deaf sign language users and people with physical limitations that leave them reliant on others for their most basic life needs. In common with many other deaf people, communication with the hearing world was severely restricted for Fulk. In the book, he recounts that he had virtually no dialogue with his family and he did not go to school until he was ten years old. It was only on the morning of his first day at school that he claims to have learned his first word, when his father wrote his name on a piece of paper. This instance is an example of the issues that can arise from the distinctive methodology used to produce the book; it seems likely Fulk meant that this was the first written word he learned, but as his comment has been reported verbatim, we cannot be sure and it was not possible for his amanuensis to be checked given he had died many years earlier. Entering school finally gave Fulk a sense of belonging and access to meaningful interaction with a peer group, but this was to be cut short following a swimming accident. Fulk broke his neck when diving and he spent the rest of his life confined to a wheelchair, reliant on others to clothe, feed, and clean him. He learned to sign in a rudimentary form using the restricted movement in his arms and to write notes using a pen held in his mouth. He experienced physical and emotional abuse in institutional care homes, and this eventually led him, through encounters with disability activists, to become an advocate for disability rights in America.

The book is not all doom and gloom. There are several humorous and incredible stories. Fulk was eventually provided with a motorized wheelchair, which aided his bid for independence. On one occasion, he and his girlfriend decided to go to a cinema, which involved an eighteen-mile round trip lasting sixteen hours in extreme heat, during which they begged drinks from houses they passed. Other journeys involved hitching lifts with strangers when batteries died and memorably getting a wheel jammed in a railway track with no one around to rescue him. Fortunately, a passing motorist arrived before a train approached and tragedy was averted. Fulk also illustrates how he found love and married, although this too was not a smooth transition and resulted in periods of separation that created further dependency issues in terms of his care and welfare. Fulk never complained and clearly took great pride in the achievements he and others had in improving life for disabled people in Arizona and beyond.

Throughout the book, these events are recalled in a matter-of-fact manner and the impact often has to be assessed by the reader. Indeed, such is the tone of the text that details such as those about his age when seeing his name for the first time could easily be missed by a casual reader. Several interesting issues are raised throughout the book but never fully explored, and this is the book’s inherent weakness. By merely retelling details of his life in a larger chronological manner, there is little contextualization of the events and there is no discussion of why or how these issues arose or how they affected those involved, beyond the purely factual. It is understandable why this style might have been adopted, perhaps as a means of keeping true to Fulk’s memory and experiences, but the narrative is patchy and incomplete as a consequence. A better approach might have been for Allen to have written a more traditional biography of Fulk, using his stories and her own memories as inspiration and illustration. This would have given much more relevance to his life story and allowed Allen to tell us more about his achievements and legacies. The postscript hints that these were extensive and far reaching, but the book never fully explores these either. Producing this book was clearly a labor of love for Allen, but a more detached and objective telling of Fulk’s story would have created a clearer understanding of the man and his life.

Citation: Martin Atherton. Review of Fulk, Don; Allen, Janet, An Invincible Spirit: The Story of Don Fulk. H-Disability, H-Net Reviews. September, 2019. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=54317

Erin Connelly, Stefanie Künzel, eds. Disease, Disability and Medicine in Medieval Europe. Oxford: Archaeopress Archaeology, 2018. 156 pp. $58.00 (paper), ISBN 978-1-78491-883-5.

Reviewed by Iona McCleery (University of Leeds) Published on H-Disability (September, 2019) Commissioned by Iain C. Hutchison (University of Glasgow)

Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=53951

The editors of this collection of ten short papers, deriving from a conference in 2014, write in their introduction that the focus of the conference was “infections, chronic illness, and the impact of infectious disease on medieval society, including infection as a disability in the case of visible conditions, such as infected wounds, leprosy, syphilis and tuberculosis” (p. 2). Although most of the papers have been updated since the conference, it would have been good to have allowed the authors more room to further develop their case studies. A longer introduction might also have helped to explain in more detail how infectious disease and chronic illness can be stigmatizing and disabling. Some of the papers takes this aspect for granted; others provide fascinating glimpses of the effect of chronic dysentery, scarring, or cysts on the daily life of individuals, but they do not have the space to expand. As a result, the collection focuses more on representations of disease and illness than on disability–although one or two papers are difficult to fit even into this broader remit–but there are still several insightful studies that might interest historians of disability. 

The two papers that most explicitly engage with physical impairment are both excellent examples of how archaeology has transformed the history of health, medicine, and disability. Both papers are interdisciplinary, drawing also on narrative sources, especially miracle collections. Cathrin Hähn identifies often quite fragmentary and difficult-to-interpret objects in burials as assistive aids dating from 600 CE-800 CE in Merovingian Gaul (northern France and northwest Germany). These probable prostheses, protective braces (ortheses), or metal caps used to reinforce the ends of long-since decayed wooden walking sticks or possibly crutches were buried in the graves of early medieval people whose skeletons present with damaged or absent bone in the lower limbs. The author suggests that the presence of these items, long after Christian conversion ended the ritual deposit of grave goods, meant that these objects were very closely associated with the individual’s bodily integrity during life. 

The second archaeological paper is by Cecilia Collins on the evidence for infectious disease in medieval Iceland using the bone changes that such conditions leave on the skeleton. The paper could function very well in a teaching context as an accessible short introduction to palaeopathology, including its limitations for understanding medieval health and disease, while providing useful contextual information on Iceland between the tenth and nineteenth centuries. The conditions considered, based on analysis of approximately 1,300 skeletons, are leprosy, tuberculosis, treponemal disease (syphilis), and hydatid cysts caused by parasitic tapeworms. This last condition provides a fascinating insight on a little-known, but quite common, impairing condition (examples of such growths recovered archaeologically were 15-20 cm in diameter so would have affected nearby bone and organs). It could have caused death after years of pain. 

Other highly interesting and well-written papers in the volume include Lucy Barnhouse’s close study of a miscellany of medical texts and practical recipes (part of MS Laud Misc 237 in the Bodleian Library in Oxford). She hypothesizes that it may have been adapted for use by a hospital run by nuns in a German-speaking region during the late Middle Ages. Also stimulating is Clara Jauregui’s study of daily life in Barcelona’s leprosarium in the late fourteenth century and based on the hospital’s extraordinarily detailed financial account books. If anyone still thinks that medieval people with leprosy necessarily led a stigmatized and isolated life, this essay would dispel such myths. The small hospital in Barcelona clearly was a compassionate and well-supplied place with a mobile and characterful community within it. 

Although there are a few essays that could have done with more updating, proofreading and help with English, and greater consistency with stylistic conventions, especially as regards longer citations and the presentation of translations versus original language texts, this is a valuable collection. All the authors were PhD students in 2014 and are now early-career researchers. This collection’s interdisciplinary approach to past health through literature, archaeology, scientific methods, and ecclesiastical records therefore represents the future direction of medical history. 

Citation: Iona McCleery. Review of Connelly, Erin; Künzel, Stefanie, eds., Disease, Disability and Medicine in Medieval Europe. H-Disability, H-Net Reviews. September, 2019. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=53951